Constitutions as the formal foundation of a country's legal and political system have important economic and political effects. Yet, we still know little about why constitutions set effective constraints on politicians in some societies, while being largely disregarded in others. Here, we ask if...

onstitutions as the formal foundation of a country's legal and political system have important economic and political effects. Yet, we still know little about why constitutions set effective constraints on politicians in some societies, while being largely disregarded in others. Here, we ask if...

Populist governance is fundamentally at odds with constitutionalism. As a political project, populism rejects constraints on "the will of the people," including those essential to liberal-democratic constitutions. Yet, the extent to which elected populists actually undermine constitutional order...

This chapter surveys economic perspectives on the separation of powers, revealing how contemporary research in political economics and the economic analysis of law conceptualize and assess institutional checks on government authority. Emphasizing principal-agent theory, it unpacks how...

This discussion paper responds to the critique of our 2022 article "Ordo-Responsibility in the Sharing Economy: A Social Contracts Perspective" published in Business Ethics Quarterly. Ghirlanda and Sacconi (2024) argue that a properly understood version of constitutional contractarianism would...

Populist governance is fundamentally at odds with constitutionalism. As a political project, populism rejects constraints on "the will of the people," including those essential to liberal-democratic constitutions. Yet, the extent to which elected populists actually undermine constitutional order...

Constitutional compliance varies significantly across countries and over time. One might, therefore, expect that constitutional change is systematically used to bring constitutional rules in line with constitutional practice. We investigate whether constitutional change indeed induces better...

Since the introduction of Article 4(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the meaning and function of the notion of constitutional identity have become an important point of contention. This study, commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional...

Since the introduction of Article 4(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the meaning and function of the notion of constitutional identity have become an important point of contention. This study, commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional...

This study, commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the AFCO Committee, assesses the status of political strikes in the EU. While workers' strikes generally seek to pressure an employer, "political strikes" are...

This study, commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the AFCO Committee, assesses the status of political strikes in the EU. While workers' strikes generally seek to pressure an employer, "political strikes" are...

This study, commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the AFCO Committee, assesses the status of political strikes in the EU. While workers' strikes generally seek to pressure an employer, "political strikes" are...

This study, commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the AFCO Committee, assesses the status of political strikes in the EU. While workers' strikes generally seek to pressure an employer, "political strikes" are...

This article focuses on financing the necessary public expenditures to address the challenge of climate change faced by human societies, specifically examining the choice of public debt. Considering the already significant levels of public debt worldwide, this decision becomes particularly...

State building and state legitimacy in the states emerging from fragility are inseparable from the notion of social contract. In the countries where the youth only know statelessness-or a complete absence of state institutions-building a new social contract from the ground up becomes an even...

Federalism is a constitutionalized version of multi-tier governance. Proponents of veto-player theory argue that a high number of veto players leads to a high degree of policy stability. Compared to states with a unitary structure, federal countries, in which at least one sub-central level of...

On 24 March 2024, presidential elections were held in Senegal, with opposition politician Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye, who was 43 at the time, emerging as the winner. On 2 April 2024, he was sworn in as the fifth President of the Republic of Senegal. This event may mark a turning point in the...

Nepal's democratic transition led to the promulgation of its Constitution in 2015 that guarantees transformative rights across economic, social, cultural, environmental and developmental spheres. The Constitution signifies a shift in the societal contract by introducing an array of fundamental...

The international development debate is increasingly referring to the notion of the "social contract" - often, however, without a clear definition of the term and its implications. We therefore make a suggestion for measuring at least some elements of social contracts in order to make it easier...

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to investigate the position of religion for the three constitutions of Egypt. Design/methodology/approach - In this study, by tracing religious identity-related studies and seeing whether their existence is attributed to the ruling elites' attitudes, it...

The United States, it is widely believed, is at a moment of constitutional crisis. At no time since the Civil War era has it seemed more likely that what James Madison called the “experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people”—the experiment in democratic constitutional...

The key constitutional issue surrounding the unitary patent system is the complete loss of national and the EU’s sovereignty in the context of industrial property and hence, use of technology – that is unprecedented. This context concerns the entire range of technological sectors including...

In Equity’s Constitutional Source, Owen W. Gallogly argues that Article III is the source of a constitutional default rule for equitable remedies—specifically, that Article III’s vesting of the “judicial Power” “in Equity” empowers federal courts to afford the remedies...

The problem of caste discrimination has come into sharp focus in the United States. In the last few years, there have been several high-profile allegations and cases of caste discrimination in employment and educational settings. As a result, organizations and institutions—including...

A “self-coup”—or “autogolpe”—is the sudden seizure of power by a President or other chief executive in contravention of a nation’s laws. Although the term “self-coup” is relatively new, the phenomenon was familiar to the Framers, who made references at the Constitutional...

This article introduces a novel database that measures governments' compliance with national constitutions. It combines information on de jure constitutional rules with data on their de facto implementation. The individual compliance indicators can be grouped into four categories that we...

Over the last couple of decades, non-majoritarian institutions (NMIs) have been introduced in many countries. Of late, they have been criticized as promoting technocracy to the detriment of democracy. A number of political scientists even argue that they would strengthen populists and be, hence,...

The paper examines Robert Sugden’s arguments for contractarian economics, which exclude objective valuation. From a metaethical stance we claim that it is possible and desirable to enrich the axiology of contractarian economics to make it more convincing and applicable. Analyzing Sugden's...

While research in constitutional economics has made important progress in recent decades, the factors determining whether a constitution is complied with have only received scant attention. We contribute to that narrow literature by studying how personal traits of political leaders are...

The rise of independent institutions, particularly central banks, and the increasing significance of the interplay between monetary, fiscal, and financial policies demand a critical reassessment of modern macroeconomic constitutions and their institutional architectures.The paper's core focus...

De jure judicial independence (JI) is the single most important predictor of de facto JI. In this paper, we describe under what conditions countries are likely to include JI in their constitutions. We describe and analyze both their original choice in this regard as well as change over time...